The headline was actually more unbelievable: Mike Langberg, “Women Aim to Build an On-line World That Excludes Boors, Cybermashers,” San Jose Mercury News, October 1, 1993.
“it was much more of a positive”: Ellen Pack, interview with the author, March 3, 2017.
The service hosted domestic abuse resources: Connie Koenenn, “Chatting the High-Tech Way, on the Women’s Wire,” Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1994.
“phone assault on the White House”: Miriam Weisang Misrach, “Only Connect,” Elle, February 1994.
“foster diversity . . . people with”: Leslie Regan Shade, “Gender and the Commodification of Community,” in Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice, eds. Andrew Feenberg and Darin Barney (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 145.
“I liked the community piece”: Pack, interview with the author, March 3, 2017.
“We had this big raging debate”: Pearce, interview with the author, February 16, 2017.
“Where is the quilting bee”: Nancy Rhine, interview with the author, February 8, 2017.
“had a lot of alpha males posturing”: Rhine, interview with the author, February 21, 2017.
“were so polite and nice”: Rhine, interview with the author, February 8, 2017.
“The original model had been”: Rhine, interview with the author, February 21, 2017.
“Facebook is good because it creates community”: Max Read, “Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?” New York, October 1, 2017, http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/10/does-even-mark-zuckerberg-know-what-facebook-is.html.
the year the Web broke: Myra M. Hart and Sarah Thorp, “Women.com,” HBS 9-800-216 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2000), 4.
“I always wanted to make this”: Pack, interview with the author, March 3, 2017.
“like working on a rocket ship”: Marleen McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
Ellen sent her a business plan: Hart and Thorp, “Women.com,” 5.
“Some got it, of course”: Pack, interview with the author, March 3, 2017.
“It was not easy to raise money”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
“When I finally got a smaller”: Ibid.
“That was a defining moment”: Ibid.
The first big deal Marleen: “Women’s Wire Retools Its Goals,” Examiner Staff Report, August 31, 1995, SFGate.com, www.sfgate.com/business/article/Women-s-Wire-retools-its-goals-3132265.php.
“They bought our subscribers”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
“They’re saying it’s a partnership”: David Plotnikoff, “Women’s Wire Gives Up Ghost on Halloween,” Salt Lake Tribune, October 30, 1995.
“She wanted to run the company”: Ibid.
“ranging from Barbie to Bosnia”: Janet Rae Dupree, “Women’s Wire: Bosnia to Barbie,” York Daily Record, August 12 1996.
“The model switched to eyeballs”: Rhine, interview with the author, February 21, 2017.
“I said, ‘Oh my God’”: Gina Garrubbo, interview with the author, March 24, 2017.
“Marleen, Ellen, me, and our CFO”: Ibid.
“it’s a woman’s World Wide Web: Anne Rickert and Anya Sacharow, “It’s a Woman’s World Wide Web,” Media Metrix and Jupiter Communications, August 2000.
“When we jumped off the cliff”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
Because women controlled more than 80 percent: Hart and Thorp, “Women.com,” 4.
While the original Women’s WIRE: Janet Rae-Dupree, “Women’s Wire Blends Humor, Off-Beat Info Online,” San Jose Mercury News, August 5, 1996.
by 1996, women.com was getting: Shade, “Gender and the Commodification of Community,” 145.
“We were on the map”: Pack, interview with the author, March 3, 2017.
According to an industry research: Hart and Thorp, “Women.com,” 4.
“We built the revenue”: Gina Garrubbo, interview with the author, March 24, 2017.
“emphasized current news”: Shade, “Gender and the Commodification of Community,” 145.
ChickClick, which began as a small: Janelle Brown, “What Happened to the Women’s Web?” Salon.com, August 25, 2000, www.salon.com/2000/08/25/womens_web.
“She was scandalously interesting”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
iVillage was expert at capitalizing: Erik Larson, “Free Money: The Internet IPO That Made Two Women Rich, and a Lot of People Furious,” New Yorker, October 11, 1999.
“like two cars on a racetrack”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
“We competed for everything”: Garrubbo, interview with the author, March 24, 2017.
“There’s often two in a category”: Laurie Kretchmar, interview with the author, March 21, 2017.
“those who thought the Web”: Janelle Brown, “What Happened to the Women’s Web?”
Canadian scholar and theorist Leslie Regan Shade: Shade, “Gender and the Commodification of Community,” 157.
“There’s the ultimate deception”: Francine Prose, “A Wasteland of One’s Own,” New York Times, February 13, 2000.
Fucked Company posted a new notice: http://web.archive.org/web/20001206145600/http://www.fuckedcompany.com:80.
“with deep losses”: Larson, “Free Money.”
“peeling them off the ceiling”: Ibid.
“It affected me”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
Women.com’s IPO was nowhere: Myra M. Hart, “Women.com (B),” HBS 9-802-109 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2001), 1.
Women.com even nosed past iVillage: Larson, “Free Money.”
“Not my favorite topic”: McDaniel, interview with the author, March 9, 2017.
“The Internet cannot sustain”: Jennifer Rewick, “iVillage.com to Buy Rival Women.com for $30 Million,” Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2001.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE GIRL GAMERS
“Very early in life”: Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 4.
This discouragement permeates: Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 62.
“It was the Andy Warhol period”: Brenda Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“little-bitty feisty woman”: Ibid.
“I had an epiphany”: Brenda Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 99.
“pixels from Mars”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“Without knowing it was hard”: “An Interview with Brenda Laurel (Purple Moon),” in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, ed. Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 119.
“You know what? I can’t stand”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“uncomfortable but fine, wild ride”: Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre, 2nd ed. (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2014), 60.
“When I interviewed men about VR”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
But just as Brenda was starting: Akira Nakamoto, “Video Game Use and the Development of Socio-Cognitive Abilities in Children: Three Surveys of Elementary School Students,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 24 (1994): 21–22.
“play games, to program”: Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, “Chess for Girls? Feminism and Computer Games,” in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, 13.
“Mastery for its own sake”: “An Interview with Brenda Laurel (Purple Moon),” 122.
“This soft mastery,” she explained: Turkle, Life on the Screen, 56.
Interval spun Brenda’s research: Cassell and Jenkins, “Chess for Girls?,” 11.
&nb
sp; “We cannot expect women to excel”: Sheri Graner Ray, Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market (Hingham, MA: Charles River Media, 2004), 6.
“the computer game equivalent of pink Legos”: “An Interview with Brenda Laurel (Purple Moon),” 122.
“it’s not only that the characters”: Ibid.
“They truly helped teach me”: Kacie Gaylon, e-mail to the author, November 1, 2016.
“Can you do this for boys?”: Laurel, Computers as Theatre, 172.
“Some shit’s going on”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“find emotional resources within themselves”: Henry Jenkins, “‘Complete Freedom of Movement’: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces,” in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, 285.
“‘virtuous cycle’ where girls playing”: Misa, “Gender Codes,” 13.
“What Purple Moon and other ‘girlie games’”: “Voices from the Combat Zone: Game Grrlz Talk Back,” complied by Henry Jenkins, in From Barbie to Mortal Kombat, 330.
“reinforce the very same stereotypes”: Rebecca Eisenberg, “Girl Games: Adventures in Lip Gloss,” Gamasutra, February 12, 1998, www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131660/girl_games_adventures_in_lip_gloss.php.
“You can’t get buy-in from somebody”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“Paul Allen took us into Chapter 7”: Ibid.
“But since Purple Moon did not make it”: Amy Harmon, “With the Best Research and Intentions, a Game Maker Fails,” New York Times, March 22, 1999, www.nytimes.com/1999/03/22/business/technology-with-the-best-research-and-intentions-a-game-maker-fails.html.
“Mattel was trying to protect their Barbie franchise”: Laurel, interview with the author, August 9, 2016.
“We’re always trying to heal something”: Laurel, Utopian Entrepreneur, 4–5.
EPILOGUE: THE CYBERFEMINISTS
“THE CLITORIS IS A DIRECT LINE TO THE MATRIX”: Plant, Zeros + Ones, 59.
“The technological landscape was very dry”: Virginia Barratt, e-mail to the author, December 1, 2014.
“The Internet was far less regulated”: Francesca da Rimini, e-mail to the author, December 2, 2014.
“As the population becomes widely familiar”: Scarlet Pollock and Jo Sutton, “Women Click: Feminism and the Internet,” in Cyberfeminism: Connectivity, Critique, Creativity, eds. Susan Hawthorne and Renate Klein (North Melbourne, AUS: Spinifex Press, 1999), 38.
“a question of survival and power”: Old Boys’ Network, “Old Boys’ Network FAQ,” 2000, http://web.archive.org/web/20000424093036/http://www.obn.org:80/faq.htm.
“Cyberfeminism only exists in the plural”: Cornelia Solfrank, “The Truth About Cyberfeminism,” 1998, www.obn.org/reading_room/writings/html/truth.html.
“not about boring toys for boring boys”: Old Boys’ Network, “100 Anti-Theses,” 1997. www.obn.org/cfundef/100antitheses.html.
“virtual techno-paradise of the new millennium”: Renate Klein, “The Politics of CyberFeminism: If I’m a Cyborg Rather Than a Goddess Will Patriarchy Go Away?” in Cyberfeminism, 10.
“Möbius strip of reality and unreality”: Katherine Cross, “Ethics for Cyborgs: On Real Harassment in an ‘Unreal’ Place,” Loading . . . The Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association 8 (2014): 4–21
“We did what we had to do at the time”: Virginia Barratt, e-mail to the author, December 6, 2014.
Index
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. The link provided will take you to the beginning of that print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.
Page numbers in italics refer to photographs.
Aarseth, Espen, 92
Abbate, Janet, 78, 177
Aberdeen Proving Ground, 41, 43, 54–55, 58
ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 169
Activision, 226
Adams, Douglas, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 171, 174
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 110, 130; see also ARPANET
Adventure, 89–94
advertising, 193, 194, 201, 205, 214
women’s Web and, 214–16, 218, 219, 221
Aerosmith, 186
Aiken, Howard, 31–36, 52, 54, 57–58, 63, 117
AIMACO, 70
“Algorhyme” (Perlman), 127–28
Allen, Madeline Gonzales, 131
Allen, Paul, 227, 235
All New Gen, 240
American Girl, 233, 235
American Laser Games, 233
American Totalisator, 60
Analytical Engine, 13, 18–23, 19, 42, 74
Anderson, Laurie, 192
AOL, 153, 209, 211, 216, 217
Apple, 161, 162, 224, 226
HyperCard, 165, 168, 169, 183, 184
Applied Mathematics Panel, 24
Aquanet, 155, 166, 170
Aristotle, 226
Army, U.S., 10, 39, 40, 41, 42, 47, 49, 51, 55, 56, 73
ARPANET, 86–87, 97, 109–23, 129–31, 133, 153
Adventure and, 89, 90
Directory for, 113, 118–19
Host Table registry of, 113, 114, 120
mix of people using, 119
NIC and, see Network Information Center
Requests for Comments (RFCs), 117–18, 120, 129
Resource Handbook for, 112–13, 118
artificial intelligence, 174, 226
Asimov, Isaac, 171
Association for Computing Machinery, 67
astronomy, 9–11, 23, 27
AT&T, 130, 131
Atari, 225, 226, 234
atomic bomb, 36, 55
Babbage, Charles, 10, 12–23, 32, 42, 52
Backus, John, 64
Balzac, Honoré de, 200
Banham, Reyner, 129
Bank of America, 100
Barbie, 212, 230, 233–35
Barratt, Virginia, 237, 238, 241
Barron’s, 198
Bay Area, 95–98, 100–102, 104–6, 107, 109, 132, 135, 154, 179, 205
BBC, 156
Bel Ami (Maupassant), 200
Berkeley Barb, 97, 102
Berners-Lee, Tim, 167–69, 172, 173
Bernoulli numbers, 21
Big Sky Telegraph, 131
Bilas, Frances, 39, 45
Bishop, Stephen, 83–85, 91
BITCH, 142
Blanch, Gertrude, 25
Bloch, Richard, 33–37
Bloom, Betty, 92, 93
Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), 86, 87, 90, 91, 110, 114, 125
Bolton, Charlie, 104–5
Borges, Jorge Luis, 154
Boulder Community Network, 131
Bowe, John, 189
Bowe, Marisa, 137, 142, 148, 178–81, 184–85, 188–94, 199–200, 202
Brand, Stewart, 100–101, 106, 132, 133, 137
Brilliant, Larry, 132, 137
Brooks, Frederick, 76
Brown University, 161–62
browsers, 135, 164, 168, 172, 183, 191
bookmarks and, 162
Mosaic, 172, 186, 209
Netscape, 172, 191, 209, 215
NIC Resource Handbook, 112–13, 118
URLs and, 215
Brucker, Roger, 88
Buckles, Mary Ann, 92
bugs, 35–36
bulletin board systems (BBS), 130–32, 134, 135, 143, 148, 179, 184, 189, 214
Echo, see Echo
sysops of, 130, 131
WELL, The, 132–35, 140, 149, 153, 179–80, 205–6, 209
Women’s WIRE, 206–12, 214
Burns, Red, 182
Bush, George, 194
Butterworth, Nicholas, 192
Byron, Annabella, 14–17, 20–22
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 12–17, 21–23, 65
Caillau, Robert, 168
CalTech, 163
Cannon, Annie Jump, 23
Carmen San Diego, 235
Carnegie Mellon University, 110
Carpenter, Candice, 216–17, 219
Catlin, Karen, 162
Cave Research Foundation, 84–90
caves, 83–88, 90–92, 94
CERN, 168
Chapline, Joe, 41
ChickClick, 216
Civil War, 23–24
Clark, Naomi, 193, 194
Clinton, Bill, 136, 207
Clinton, Hillary, 140, 207
COBOL, 71–73
CODASYL (Conference on Data Systems and Language), 70–72
Collins, Floyd, 87
communities, 102, 119, 129–31, 177, 179, 202, 218
iVillage, 216–17
Purple Moon, 231–32, 235
Women’s WIRE, 205–15
see also bulletin board systems
Community Memory, 101–4, 109, 129, 130, 132, 179, 215
CompuServe, 153, 209, 211–12
computer(s):
change in definition of, 25
color of, 59
electromechanical, 38
electronic, 38, 41
first, 31, 38, 79
first use of word in print, 9
general-purpose, 18, 20, 38, 42
hardware for, see hardware
marketing of, 228
men’s vs. women’s view of, 229
operating systems terms in, 223
personal, 59, 111, 157, 178, 222–23, 224, 225, 226, 228
programming of, see programming
software for, see software
computer games, 226, 228–36
Adventure, 89–94
All New Gen, 240
Barbie, 230, 233–35
for boys, 228–30, 234
for girls, 233–35
marketing of, 228
mastery in, 229
Purple Moon, 227–36
Rockett, 230–36
Secret Paths, 232, 236
Computer History Museum, 103
computers, human, 9–11, 23–26, 40, 42, 52, 66, 79, 80, 115, 222
computer science, 93, 97, 100, 101, 104, 107, 110, 124, 155, 157, 159, 162, 165, 222
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